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The noble Lord, Lord Soley, rightly referred to the guilt complex. The eco-mullahs will turn up in the form of Ministers, advising us that we should not go over 60 miles an hour on the motorway because we are adding to carbon emissions. I came here in a car which is powered by the equivalent of 500 horses—one would have done. I do not feel guilty about it, but it will not be long before I do. And I will certainly be taxed on it, if the Mayor of London has anything to do with it, because my car has a big engine. These are small things. Why should not people travel on economy jets to their destinations? Why should they be made to feel guilty? This is what will happen.
I will not be convinced about this until the hockey-stick graph has been explained to me. Are our temperatures higher or lower than those in the medieval warm period? If they are lower, let us, asthe noble Lord, Lord Taverne, implied, lie back and enjoy it.
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1.34 pm
Lord Sheldon: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, has chaired the Economic Affairs Committee over a fair period and we all appreciate the way in which he has, with little difficulty, obtained the necessary consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, began his speech by saying that he would be swimming against the tide; I will limit myself to paddling against it.
Looking into the future of climate change can obviously be very speculative, but I find the way in which some of the forecasts anticipate the situation 100 years from now almost absurd. In 1850, probably the most important concern involved the depletion of coal, on which industry and the world’s economic future depended. Much future assessment was based on the depletion of the most important energy that was available and practical. Disasters were widely predicted. No one could anticipate the various fuels that would subsequently become available—nuclear, gas and oil—and the situation today is similar.
We cannot make assumptions about energy availability and its use at the end of the century. There is so much unknown in the century ahead. To make suggestions about such a long-term future may be acceptable, but the dogmatism that has been poured into the argument is not. We can certainly look ahead to the next 30 years. That is a sensible time period, and the dependency on oil over that time is unquestionably a matter that we have to consider.
In his evidence to the committee, Professor Colin Robinson said, on page 2 of the report,
- “past experience suggests that once a consensus emerges and passes into the conventional wisdom—as the climate change consensus has done—it is difficult to dislodge by the normal processes of scientific challenge”.
“The scientific establishment comes to depend on research grants which are most easily obtained if research projects appear to deal with accepted problems. Consultants gear their efforts to advise on these same issues. The media constantly run stories that appear to reinforce the consensus. For all these reasons, the consensus is highly resistant to change”.
That consensus needs examining. What concerns me are the measures that we are proposing to take to deal with the problem of the heating of our planet. In Britain, we are responsible for between 2 per cent and 3 per cent. China, India and the USA are the energy problem countries—China and India in particular will increasingly be responsible for global warming. Compared with these countries, our 2.7 per cent is an insignificant amount. While we must of course try to reduce it, other countries must face up to their responsibilities.
One aspect of global warming concerns the melting of the Antarctic ice cap. Sea levels are expected to rise and low-lying countries will be affected. That is undoubtedly a world problem, but it needs to be addressed substantially by the major polluting countries themselves. They have the problem at their doorstep. Meanwhile, I hope that the IPCC will deal with the questions that have been raised about the emissions scenario and will conduct the reappraisal that our report recommends. It has
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One important matter raised in our report is whether the damage from climate change is likely to be more in the developing than in the developed countries. The Nordhaus estimate, which we mention in our report, is that for a 2.5 degree centigrade rise in world warming, world GNP could decline by 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent, but in Africa the figure could be4 per cent and in India 5 per cent. That shows that the damage is not evenly spread and that the developing countries generally tend to lose more than the developed countries. The question following from that is why we are at the forefront of pressing for action on climate change when the problem for Britain is so much less than it is for other countries. Obviously, we must play a part in helping to deal with world problems, but when so many in the countries most affected appear almost indifferent to the problems that will affect them most, our role should not be the dominant one.
The further question that we have to ask is whether the costs of warming control is in a number of cases greater than the benefits of dealing with the problem. One might look at this matter differently: it is not out of the question that we in Britain could actually benefit from global warming. One scenario might be that the north of England and Scotland acquire a climate similar to that of the south of England, with the south of England acquiring a Mediterranean climate. I personally am very happy with the climate that we now have, but possible changes could be perfectly acceptable and in the eyes of many could even be an advantage. What troubles me is that we who have less to lose than so many other countries should anticipate spending so much more than some of those countries that have far more to lose.
1.41 pm
Lord Turner of Ecchinswell: My Lords, I begin by declaring a personal interest, since I shall shortly become chairman of a company investing in low-carbon technologies. That reflects my belief that there are opportunities for business to create employment and profits from the technologies required for a low-carbon economy. I am also a director of Siemens UK, which has interests in renewable energy as well as in non-renewable energy. But it is on public policy that we focus today.
Last year’s report made a very important contribution to the debate about public policy. But there are dangers, as illustrated by some of the press reporting of the report, that the report’s important
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The report questions the robustness of the economic assumptions that underpin the IPCC’s emission scenarios. It makes two specific criticisms. First, it says that the IPCC was wrong to use market exchange rate measures of GDP growth rather than purchasing power parity measures. Secondly, it says that it was politically constrained from including scenarios in which the developing world or particular parts of it were unsuccessful in achieving convergence towards developed world living standards.
The first criticism is entirely justified. The market exchange rate approach is simply wrong and the PPP approach correct. The percentage of respected economists who say otherwise is as small as the percentage of respected scientists who deny that human-induced climate change is occurring. The second criticism is also valid. Almost no economist would assume a common rate of convergence across all developing economies. Many would suggest that the best current assumption is that some parts of the developing world—China and other Asian countries in particular—may be achieving historically rapid rates of growth and convergence, while others, including several African states, are sadly not yet on any clear convergence path at all. These are important methodological points and, although it does not follow that better methodology will necessarily produce materially lower estimates of economic growth, emissions or concentrations than those in the IPCC scenarios, there is a danger that the casual reader, or the reader searching for reasons to justify a policy of inaction, will slip to that conclusion.
The market exchange rate versus PPP distinction is important but, as the report itself makes clear in table 3, the impact on concentration levels likely to pertain in 2100 is fairly slight. The illustration given shows an adjustment in one predicted concentration level, on one scenario, from 731 parts per million to 678, which in terms of possible long-term climate effects is no more than a shift from the absolutely disastrous to the very slightly less disastrous. More important, it is not clear that slipping to more differentiated and realistic approaches to convergence and growth will produce lower growth rates, since if current growth assumptions look rather optimistic for Africa, they may well be too pessimistic for China, India and other Asian countries.
The IPCC scenarios assume that world GDP will grow somewhere between 2.2 per cent per annum and 3 per cent per annum in the 110 years between 1990 and 2100, but the IMF's latest world economic outlook database figures, which are correctly weighted on a PPP basis, show that global growth is now running at 4.9 per cent per annum. The combination of the past 15 years of historical experience, which are facts, and the IMF’s forecast for
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Future global growth forecasts are highly uncertain, but one of the central economic facts of the past 15 years is that the increased integration of the global economy—the great power of the global free-market system—is unleashing, at least for a time, a major acceleration of growth in developing Asian economies which account for more than 40 per cent of the world's population. Once we allow for that phenomenon—which was rather strangely unreferred to in a report to do with the economic input into climate change—it is quite possible that the more robust methodologies for which the report rightly argues will suggest estimates for 21st-century growth at least within the 2.2 per cent to 3 per cent range and possibly even above it.
So it is really not the case, as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, suggested, that the global growth forecasts in the IPCC are clearly biased upwards. I find it difficult to understand how he can stress at one point in his speech the rapid pace at which China is growing and building coal power stations and the fact that it may rapidly become the world's biggest emitter, but then assert in the same speech that we know that the IPCC forecasts are biased upwards.
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, perhaps I may intervene as the noble Lord has mentioned me by name, twice I think. What concerned me most was that, whereas the energy intensity of growth in the world in recent years has steadily diminished, the IPCC economic forecasts show that that will be reversed and that energy intensity will increase—according to those forecasts. That makes an enormous difference in carbon dioxide emissions.
Lord Turner of Ecchinswell: My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Lord that, in addition to growth rate, it is important to consider the issue of the carbon intensity of growth. However, he very deliberately drew attention to the fact that Chinese growth is being driven by coal power rather than gas power. One of the key drivers of the increasing carbon efficiency of growth—of falling carbon emissions relative to growth over the past 20 years in the developed world—has been the increasing use of gas. But if China is growing rapidly, and powering itself extensively through coal, we may well see a major growth spurt that is very carbon intensive. The noble Lord seemed to deploy a debating technique whereby, to argue that Kyoto is completely ineffective,
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As the noble Lords, Lord Oxburgh and Lord Rees of Ludlow, stressed, there are uncertainties in the details of climate change science, but extremely high probabilities, bordering on certainty, that the scale of global warming could be significant and harmful if concentration levels of greenhouse gases rise even to the IPCC’s middle scenarios, let alone to its high scenarios.
A similar situation applies to the economics. There are uncertainties and it is important continually to improve forecast methodologies and the clarity of communication. But if the global market economy is even reasonably successful in delivering widening prosperity across an increasing proportion of the developing world—an outcome that we should surely desire in human terms, and which at present, at least for some regions of the world, looks extremely likely—it is almost certain that, unless we take deliberate countervailing action, concentration levels of greenhouse gases will rise to at least pre-industrial levels, and to levels not seen for hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of years. It is vital that that near certainty remains clear to people even as we note important uncertainties in the detail.
1.51 pm
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, it is hard to think of a debate that it is more of a privilege to listen to. I warmly thank the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, for giving us the opportunity to debate this issue and to listen to such thought- provoking speeches.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Teverson on his maiden speech. He is a tremendous addition to the Liberal Democrat Benches, with his experience in economics, politics and finance. As we have heard, he is a very passionate exponent of the issues that will face us in the future.
We all might have expected the G8 summit to put climate change at the top of its agenda, but yet again it has been overtaken by tragic events which it will no doubt have to spend much time debating instead. Although it may still touch on climate change, its fate is never to be the urgent issue of the day. Politicians will continue to struggle with that. That is why the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, was so important. Kyoto is not an end in itself, but it is a unique first essential step along the path of some international agreement on dealing with this threat. Of course, it is imperfect in its current form and I have no doubt that it will not be perfect in its post-2012 form, but it is very much a first step and a statement that the world wants to take action. That is why it is so important that the developing world states that it will join in that, and that it is concernedabout it.
Some interesting issues have been raised; for example, whether the green movement is hostile to science. That is like asking whether scientists are hostile to the environment. It is a non-question. I am
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The committee’s evidence is excellent and makes interesting reading. As one would expect, it reveals varied opinions, and interesting, thought-provoking questions were asked. As I have said, the debate today has been excellent, but I join other speakers in expressing a certain disappointment about the report. Others have mentioned the tone of the report, but perhaps I could be slightly more forthright in saying that one of the weaknesses of the report is that it started out with an assumption which it then set out to prove.
Professor Colin Robinson was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon. At the start of the evidence volume, Professor Robinson makes the point that economists are not qualified to comment in detail on the methods used by scientists to model climate change. But the tone of the report is set by his comment that those who call for substantial action are,
That sets the tone for the report, which spends an undue amount of time questioning the intricacies of the modelling and the scenarios behind some of the predictions of the IPCC.
I could not better the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Turner, and I certainly would not wish to try. I will read his speech in Hansard. He encapsulatedfar more eloquently than I would many of my reservations about the assumptions that had been made about the IPCC. Other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, said that the very questioning and wishing for certainty in scenarios that are of their very nature uncertain is unrealistic.
Those of us who opened the report with anticipation felt that because the committee was so over-determined to pursue that one issue at length—whether the IPCC was too politicised—it was to the loss of other issues that were not explored. Noble Lords have mentioned some of them. My noble friend Lord Vallance made a particularly powerful speech about the technologies and the potential behind them. I would have expected the committee to spend two or three chapters on the optimism reflected in his speech about those possibilities, rather than one chapter.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, mentioned lifestyle change, which was perhaps slightly outside the remit of the committee. Nevertheless, the willingness of people, given the potential, to change their lifestyle and to adapt is worth exploring. It is cynical to say that people want to carry on regardless. Many surveys have shown that when confronted with choices, one of the most important things to people is their children’s future. After all, that is what people are striving for, that is what people are educating their children for, and this is about the sort of inheritance that people want their children to have. When confronted with the
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The committee had some strong evidence fromthe Royal Society, which outlined 12 misleading arguments that it refuted at length and in detail. Nevertheless, those misleading arguments have been advanced again today. The noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, mentioned a cosier, warmer climate; the very thing that the Royal Society refutes on page 302 of its evidence. Paragraphs 149 to 155 of the report seem to reproduce those misleading arguments. I wonder whether the committee had really taken to heart the evidence given by the Royal Society, which explained why those arguments were wrong.
However, I would not want to leave that point without saying that the report had some particular strengths. For example, paragraph 180 on adaptation becoming the norm of policy thinking was very important. Paragraph 181, which talked of a carbon tax replacing the climate change levy as the way forward, and paragraph 182, which again emphasised innovation regarding climate change, were also important.
Before this debate I asked myself whether at this point we would be able to ask if the committee had moved on in its thinking from last year. A number of speeches—those of the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Vallance, in particular—indicated that times had changed and Members of the committee have said that a year has passed. We now have the Stern review which is able to build on the committee’s work. It was not clear whether the Stern review happened because of this report and whether the Treasury was pushed into such a review, but that is not important.
I hope that the Stern review will concentrate on the issue of mitigation or adaptation. Of course it is not a choice; it is a bit like asking, “Do we need food or sleep”? Clearly, we need global mitigation action. In our reaction, that of the developed world, we will not be the first countries to suffer catastrophic effects, but that does not mean that in the short term we should not worry about the catastrophic effects on others and, in the long term, the catastrophic effects on the developing world will mean catastrophic effects on us, as my noble friend Lord Teverson so dramatically described when he talked about migration.
Many noble Lords mentioned the predictions about warming as measured by the air. The noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned the work of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. The Plymouth Marine Laboratory has been carrying out some extremely interesting work regarding the deep oceans. Even if you argue this way or that about warming in the atmosphere, what is happening in the deep oceans should give us all great cause for concern, because it takes far more to warm a small amount in the deep ocean than it does in the atmosphere. The deep oceans are a real indicator of the extent of the problem, according to the information given to me by the laboratory.
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